'Day of Honor'

Stardate: Unknown
Written By: Jeri Taylor
Directed By: Jesus Salvador Trevino
Rating: *** (out of 5)

�Seven continues her quest to be human, or more to stop being Borg while B�Elanna must try and get through �The Day of Honor� a Klingon holiday where Klingons reflect on the past year at the honorable deeds they have accomplished and honor Kahless.

I�m now putting my nitpicking hat and gloves on. :)

It sounds like a typical Klingon holiday, and an interesting one, but I�d be interested to know how Klingons celebrate it on Kronos.  Here B�Elanna eats Blood Pie, than goes to the holodeck to the �Caves of Kahless� to eat from the heart of a Targ, to endure twenty blows of painsticks, and do something at some cave of Kahless or something in that way.  But anyway, the Cave of Kaless must get very cramped on the Day of Honor and Targ heart must be a great export.  And does everyone go to those caves and climb them or whatever to honor Kahless?  What a tourist attraction!

I might just be in a nitpicking mood, but it would have been more realistic to have other things happen.  The Targ and painsticks are believable, but the locations aren�t.  And where the safeties turned off?  I guess they where otherwise the Klingon in there wouldn�t have been able to hurt her.  And when she was being hurt, she could�ve just said �Holodeck, end program.�  And then she leaves the program running for Tom to see and they have a small fight.

While B�Elanna is facing holographic Klingons, Seven is adjusting to life on board Voyager.  She has requested duties to pass the time and Janeway assigns her to help create a Transwarp technology on Voyagers engines.

Back to nitpicking I�m afraid, I don�t think this would be possible.  I don�t know anything about the technology and I would assume that the Transwarp technology would reacquire a lot of energy.  A Borg cube would naturally have plenty of energy as it is a massive ship and within reach of its own territory.  But Voyager is puny against a Borg cube, and the energy requirements would be outstanding for Voyager.  Like I said though, the technology can be shaped however the writer�s see fit and they would no doubt accommodate that.

Meanwhile Voyager encounters the Cataati.  The Cataati are an interesting species.  Only some thousand survivors are left after the Borg assimilated them, they used to be a wealthy and peaceful race, now they rely on other people for help, attacking them if they can�t get anything.  But at first they appear friendly and request supplies and Thorium Isotopes to fuel their ships.

When the time comes to test the Borg technology, it backfires and for the first time we get to see the Warp Core being ejected, adding to B�Elanna�s bad day.  And also adding to the nit picking, but this is a big one.  The Warp Core didn�t explode!!

Making B�Elanna�s day even worse she must go with Tom in a shuttle to retrieve the core where the Cataati are in the middle of salvaging the core and won�t give it back.  Eventually the Cataati destroy the shuttle (yet another shuttle), B�Elanna and Tom escaping in Environmental Suites.  How can anyone possibly have a worse day, and it doesn�t get much better, both their suites end up being damaged and they are loosing oxygen fast, having only a half hour left of oxygen.

In a cliched few scenes, B�Elanna tells Tom that she loves him.  Surprised?  I�ll admit that I wasn�t.

Back on Voyager Janeway has suspicions that Seven caused the accident in Engineering.  But Seven says that as a Borg, because all thoughts are shared, deception is irrelevant and they discover the problem soon after.

Voyager finds Tom and B�Elanna, but a fleet of Cataati ships stops them and wants more supplies and Seven (this won�t be the first time!).  This is soon sorted out, and bargained for the Warp Core, with a special device that created unlimited isotopes for the Cataati.  Now I originally felt sorry for the Cataati, but it turns out they are just pretty normal villains, which is a pity because they actually had some potential.

It ends in a cliched way, being rescued just in the nick-of-time!  And surprisingly, just after the design, and production of that isotope device and all the rest that happened, Tom and B�Elanna must�ve been in some kind of Temporal Anomaly, that half hour was stretched a great deal!

�Day of Honor� wasn�t such a good episode for me.  It was full of cliched scenes and plot-holes.  I�m hoping that none of this is forgotten though, and for being something that may just change Tom and B�Elanna it gets a higher rating that I expected to give.  I�m generous you know!